Liverpool fans are waking on Monday morning after a week we haven’t been used to, with disappointment in both the Champions League and Carabao Cup.
Having really lost just four games of importance (Nottingham Forest in the league, Plymouth in the FA Cup, PSG and Newcastle), it feels like our current rewards don’t befit how well we’ve played this season.
A lot of this will be down to a really poor Wembley display though and many will point to the decision for Alexis Mac Allister to be placed on Dan Burn for corners.
Speaking about this decision after the game, Arne Slot said (via liverpoolfc.com): “I can explain.
“We play zonal so we have five players zonally close to our goal, so if the ball falls there it is always one of the five stronger players that are going to attack that ball.
“And we have three players that man-mark and Macca is one of them.
“Normally a player like Dan Burn or another one runs to the zone because normally…
“I think he’s an exception to that because I have never seen in my life a player from that far away heading a ball with so much force into the far corner.
“That is part of logic, that they either have to go far away from our zone, which 99 out of 100 times that will never lead to a goal, or they have to arrive in our zone and then it’s an equal battle, if you want to call it like this.
“So credit to him, I think he’s one of the few players that can score a goal from that distance with his head.”
It was a brilliant header from the defender but it was glaringly obvious before the ball came into the box, that it was a huge mismatch in height between two players.
With the Geordie moving away from the zonal defenders and into a position where he isolated the Argentine, it was clever planning from our opponents but poor that nobody in red sensed the danger and came to our midfielder’s aid.
If Liverpool enter half-time at 0-0 it could have been a different game
What makes matters worse is that the goal scorer said afterwards that Mac Allister wasn’t watching the ball, meaning he had an even greater advantage for the finish.
We saw Virgil van Dijk at the full-time whistle head over to the cup winners and congratulate them because they deserved victory on the day.
We didn’t turn up and the right result occurred, though it could have been so much different if small changes were made.
Adapting on the pitch is as important as coaches making tactical changes but that wasn’t the case for one important corner.
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